Pinckney Island

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13 April 2021 - Hilton Head

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Yesterday I took a nice long run on Pinckney Island, which is just a hop over the intracoastal waterway from Hilton Head. It's one of those beautiful places that just feels familiar even though I can't recall exactly when I'd ever been there. A Strava friend who I met running the ultra through Chianti actually recommended it (he lives in New York, but has family here). There were ibises in the trees, raccoon tracks on the beach, and fiddler crabs everywhere. Now the island's only human inhabitants are its caretakers. And it's far enough off the island that it was pretty empty of tourists as well. The parking lot doesn't hold but a few dozen cars and it was mostly empty. For most of my run I was alone with Nature. It's hard not to imagine the island with hurricane tidal surge flowing across it. How many times must have some of these old oaks endured it? How did the people who lived here before we could see them coming fair? Redoubts in the boughs of the oaks? Or setting their canoes westward to the distant land across the high water? My mind wandered to E. O. Wilson and I looked for the ants - with the introduction of crazy ants to the southeast the once prevalent fire ants no longer have hills everywhere. and compared to the giant piles of pine needles that form the anthills of Norway, the ones here are a subdued affair. There's no way they could possible could a giant pile of fermenting pine needles in the hot sun here, and so under the earth they must be. So much about Nature here feels like home. Running I found myself even after a week still ill adapted to the heat though. Still I could not help but appreciate how lucky I was to be in this time and this place.